The Jos crisis

Jos Crisis saga: Who will be the Next?
By Folarin Samson

Yet again, the newspapers were awashed on Monday with the gruesome story of how not less than 500 people perished in Jos (In media parlance, bad news is good news).What annoys more is that harmless women and children fell the highest victims. I am afraid. I feel terrified by this wanton bloodshed and carnage of innocent citizens. In Nigeria, people now die like fowls. A crisis here and before one says jack, another has surfaced. Who then knows the time of the next onslaught? Who will be the next victim of a sadistic pogrom? We are no longer safe in our own country. Insecurity looms large at us. We are back to the state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes as nasty, brutish and short. Predictably, the police would emerge from their hideouts to shamelessly and insensitively sputter their nauseating and disgusting mantra: ‘We are thoroughly investigating the issue and culprits will soon be brought to book’. Arrant nonsense! Gibberish! Just as they brought to book the killers of Alfred Marshal, Dele Giwa, Bola Ige, Bayo Ohu, et al. Who are they deceiving? And by the way, we are no longer hearing about the serial orgy killer, Clifford Orji. Failed armed force!

But who are these elusive and sporadic killers? Without any bias or prejudice, they are a clique of subversive elements of Hausa/Fulani extraction. Like Chameleons, they either put on the cloak of Boko Haram today or Kalo Kato tomorrow. They also have a cruel way of snuffing out lives from hapless citizens. Their chief tool is an awkwardly long curved sharp knife, the sight of which alone could petrify. All they do is seize their victim, grab his neck and slit it in a moment. Then blood gushes out like from a broken pipe. Blood stained, they proceed to another victim, grinning as they conduct the same dastardly rites on him or her. Do we say these people are human beings at all?

The spate of killing took another dimension in the slaughtering of about 5oo people. The murderers were identified as Fulani herdsmen. It seems to me that they were dissatisfied with butchering animals and so decided to shift to fellow human beings. This does not only portray these Hausa/Fulani as callous but bestial. Or how can one describe a situation where a group of devilish Fulani bandit sneaked into people’s homes in the wee hours of the night, turned their neck while still in sweet dreamland, oblivious to their imminent death and with no chance of possibly saying a goodbye to friends and folks, only to die like a fowl; worse than a fowl.

Unfortunately, these satanic emissaries did not spare kids. They also decapitated them in a flash of their bloody knife. Cruel, hot death! Oh God, 500 souls in a single swoop of human brutality? I can’t understand.
But why Jos again? Is this a religious fight or another ethnic struggle? This state that was once the land of tourist attraction for sometime now has been the hotbed for devastation. Lives are no longer safe. After a religious or sectarian attack in which hundreds of lives were lost, we still ask ourselves who will be the next? There are so many animalistic and cannibalistic humans around that you don’t know who is who.

As I write this article I could not help but shed tears. You wonder why I have been sounding so emotional and acerbic? I am a final year student in a Nigerian University who will soon be herded by some unfortunate fellows into some of these dreaded dens. Some of my senior colleagues have already been posted. How will they cope?

My recommendations are spiky. I want the police to wake up. What we know them for is money, more money and all the money. They collect money from the Government (increment in salary) and citizens (at T-junctions and bus-stops. This has now become a convention). Whenever incidents like this happen, the first thing the Inspector General of Police should do is to first tender an unreserved public apology for his ineptitude and conspicuous debacle and then promise to run the criminals to earth or upon default, resign. We are tired of this egocentric political spirit of effusive pledges and promises without delivery! The rule should be: For a life lost based on insecurity and dereliction of duty, a police officer must be relieved of his or her duty. For two, a police station should be heavily sanctioned. For three or more, a top officer must of necessity resign and if he is stubborn, fired!

Yes, I want those areas with blood-thirsty human-demons delisted from the NYSC list. Walahi Talahi I shall not serve in these evil areas. It is foolhardiness to go and serve in a place like Jos or Bauchi in the name of patriotism. I believe that serving my country should not even be for a single year. It is a lifetime affair. If to save my life I don’t serve for a single year, I know I will have the opportunity in the future. Please, government officials in charge of posting, save the youths.

To those of you who finance destruction of lives and property, psyche up illiterates, semi-literates and educated illiterates with religious sentiments and animosity to achieve your selfish ends, I want to say the God who tracked down Abacha has not gone out of business. You cannot go unpunished, as long as the world stands. If retribution does not catch up with you, be sure your posterity will bear the brunt of your wickedness. As for aljunnah (heaven), you will be shut out of it. And to those mercenaries, who go on killing assignments for pecuniary gains and evil thrills, your reward is more imminent than you can ever imagine.

My country people, we cannot continue like this. We have been accused of docility and passivity. The people in government trample on us; the bad politicians deceive us and take our humility for stupidity. And alas, our own blood brothers and sisters join forces with these dark powers to destroy us. You should not expect me to talk about secession as the solution to our crisis. I will not urge reprisal attacks on you as a measure to halt this altercation. Peace loving Nigerians, in this hour of political, social, economic and ethnic brouhaha, we cannot neglect the efficacy of prayer. Did I disappoint you? No, of course not. We have done it before. Let’s pray that the shenanigans be deposed and dealt with like Tafa Balogun and Diepreye Alamasiaya; that the untouchable ‘cabals’ go the way of Abacha. The holy writ says ‘when thy judgments are upon the earth, the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness’ QED.

Folarin Samson is a student of the University of Lagos, Akoka. 08030572852 Text only. childofdkingdom@yahoo.com